Ranking Our Films In 2018: Number 6 – Barbazul

Amy was feeling high after the release of her first film, Sirwiñakuy. It opened in 5 movie theatres in Bolivia to controversial reviews and it stayed on the big screen for 5 straight months. Before the premiere of the film, Amy had a script, based on the Charles Perrault children’s story BARBAZUL. Her version takes the story to contemporary time and to Bolivia. And instead of Barbazul being a pirate, he’s a wealthy wine maker.

For the film Amy called Veronica to play one of the lead roles, that of Barbazul’s first wife. He had Mila in mind to play the last of the brides, Soledad, who finds out about the nasty doings of her husband to be. Meanwhile, Jac was busy with a script, La Jaula de Dolores (Dolores Cage) with Mila and Amy as the leading characters in that story. But an offer of money came to make an inquisition movie, so Jac decided to shoot Maleficarum instead.

In December of 2010, Vero was in town to shoot BARBAZUL.

The story:

Based on the the fairytale “La barbe bleue” (1697) written by Charles Perrault about a man with a blue beard who kills his wives.

Barbazul meets Soledad (Mila Joya), a young aspiring model with a dependent sister. After a brief courtship, he proposes marriage and takes her to his faraway plantation. Before leaving on a business trip, Barbazul gives Soledad the keys to the house with the condition that she not enter his private room. Soledad, overcome with curiosity, takes advantage of Barbazul’s absence to enter the forbidden room where she discovers her future husband’s terrifying secrets. Many women have come before her, but none have survived.

Artfully done, Barbazul gives the initial impression of following Charles Perrault. The young wife, Soledad, like Perrault’s creation, is the subject of the film, or so it seems. But that is not Amy Hesketh’s intention. You see, Barbazul is about Bluebeard and his attempts to exorcise his demons.

The film is a strange, dark, psychological journey of man who has a personality disorder at best and is a serial killer at worse. One more point. Bluebeard is a misogynist in Perrault story, we suppose, but there is no convincing explanation. Does Amy’s film verify that label for her Barbazul and does that define his murderous inclinations?